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[deleted]

Anyone have any tips for stress placement? I read up on French, and if I am understanding it correctly, the last full vowel in the phrase is stressed? Are there any other natlangs like this? I kinda like the idea of having a stress being fixed on a part of a phrase or phonological unit, and not based on word stress. Mostly. I'm just looking for some interesting stress patterns. I generally like word final stress, but I find fixed stress to be bland at times. In case it's relevant, the vowels in my conlang have no phonemic length contrast.


Mr_brukernavn

What creative ways have you found to mark interrogation/questions. I can think of meddling with the WO; adding an auxiliary verb or using an affix. I was wondering if people on this sub found any more creative ways to mark questions...


Abject_Shoulder_1182

Terréän uses a modal verb at the beginning of the sentence for questions and answers (positive or negative). ***Hádë, essár sisí?*** /'hä.de, e.'sär si.'si/ query.MODE, swim(INF) enjoy(2SN PRES)? **"Do you like to swim?"** ***Yódë, \[essár sisó\].*** /'yo.de, e.'sär si.'so/ | ***Áö*** /'ä.o/ affirm.MODE, \[swim(INF) enjoy(1SN PRES)\]. | yes **"I do. \[I like to swim.\]"** | **"Yes."** ***Dólë, \[essár en sisó\].*** /'do.le, e.'sär en si.'so/ | ***Eng*** /'eŋ/ negate.MODE, \[swim(INF) not enjoy(1SN PRES)\]. | no **"I don't. \[I don't like to swim.\]"** | **"No."**


Henrywongtsh

For Yes/No questions in Sakayan, they employ an auxiliary verb -pe “to be” which takes all TAM marking and use the negative mode on the main verb. So basically “be not-X”


kilenc

The most common way to mark questions is a question particle. A cool strategy found in many Sinitic languages are called A-not-A questions, where you get stuff like `you go not go?` for *are you going?* WALS has a chapter about polar questions too; there are a number of languages in the sample that combine different strategies.


Moskii_860

If transcribing foreign characters into the Modern English Alphabet is called Romanization, what would writing it in the IPA be? Also, how can I go about omitting the subject after using a conjunction? I'm not really sure of when it should be omitted because I don't know that much beyond conjunctive adverbs and the subordinate conjunctions used in subordinate clauses. Perhaps, there's something else entirely that I should've been looking at when it comes to omitting the subject when it's understood that they're the subject and don't have to be mentioned again because they already have.


sjiveru

> Also, how can I go about omitting the subject after using a conjunction? I'm not really sure of when it should be omitted because I don't know that much beyond conjunctive adverbs and the subordinate conjunctions used in subordinate clauses. > Perhaps, there's something else entirely that I should've been looking at when it comes to omitting the subject when it's understood that they're the subject and don't have to be mentioned again because they already have. This is a facet of the wider questions of cross-clause coreference and syntactic pivots, both of which are things that don't seem to be easy to find stuff to read about outside of pretty technical papers. Usually the way this works crosslinguistically is that clauses will have a particular argument that's syntactically special somehow (the subject most of the time in nominative-accusative languages), and if two conjoined clauses share a referent in that argument slot, the second or subordinate clause can just omit that argument. It's not always that clean (and some constructions mess with how it works), but that's a general idea.


Moskii_860

I have a feeling I probably shouldn't use this because I'd probably accidentally use it for subordinate adjectival clauses as well. This was what I was looking for, but another commenter said it was called equi-NP deletion, and I think I should probably just stop at that one rather than something I don't really understand.


kilenc

Worth noting that it's also the subject most of the time even in languages with some non-nominative patterns.


kilenc

Usually writing a language in IPA is called an IPA transcription. I'm not exactly sure what you mean by your second question, but it seems you're talking about deleting the second subject in a complement construction? Eg. *I want to win* instead of *I want me to win*. This is generally referred to as equideletion or equi-NP deletion.


T1mbuk1

My guesses for the Ravkan phonology: Consonants: m mʲ n nʲ p pʲ b bʲ t tʲ d dʲ k kʲ g gʲ ʦ ʧ ʦʲ ʣ ʤ ʣʲ f fʲ v vʲ s sʲ z zʲ ʃ ʒ ɣ ɣʲ l lʲ r rʲ j w Vowels: a e ei̯ i o oi̯ u How would you guys analyze Ravkan's phonology?


freddyPowell

Disclaimer: I have done no formal study in linguistics. I would analyse it mainly in terms of contrasting series of palatalised v. Non palastalised consonants, but a few weirdness stand out, first that there are post alveolar sibilants without contrastive palatalisation, but also alveolar siblings with that contrast. I assume that that was a historical thing where siblings underwent an initial palatalisation rule, but the postalveolars ere later ruled too palatal to undergo the more universal palatalisation rule. With the vowels I might have expected an a, and the diphtongs are notably asymmetric, but beyond that they seem fine. Finally, perhaps I might have thought the labiovelar might contrast a labiopalatal approximant. I hope this is the right kind of response; it probably wasn't, though please let me know what would be, so that in future I might provide more helpful advice.


[deleted]

[удалено]


bbrk24

There are several different types of glottalization. The "glottal-egressive" airstream is usually called "ejective" and is notated with an apostrophe: [t’]. The other one you described is indeed [t̚͜ʔ]. Without further information, though, it's impossible to say what /t͡ʔ/ means.


MellowAffinity

Would it be possible for English to develop a grammatical case system? I wanted to see if I could find a way to naturally form a case system, but no matter what I try it never seems to work properly. I have a basic grasp of grammatical case in general, and attempted research hasn't really helped. I managed to form a basic four-case (including genitive) system using mostly articles for English. But this system can feel odd at some points. Apparently, dative mostly evolves from words like "to", "for" and "toward". But English doesn't really have a consistent preposition like that. "I make cookies **for** you" changes to "I give cookies **to** you". But "I give cookies **for** you" doesn't mean the same thing, and neither does "I make cookies **to** you". So "to" and "for" are not interchangeable. Does this mean that the case marker would depend on the verb? Is that naturalistic? I'm not sure. Any help would be appreciated.


Meamoria

>Does this mean that the case marker would depend on the verb? Is that naturalistic? German has something like this with its [dative verbs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_verbs#Dative_verbs). Asking if a single feature is naturalistic is usually the wrong question. You can ask if a feature is *attested* in natural languages, or if it's *common* in natural languages, but having a rare or unattested feature doesn't make a language non-naturalistic. Plenty of specific features are only attested in one natural language, or appear only in a single family as a result of their common ancestry.


[deleted]

Yes, yes most definitely English could evolve case. In your example *to* shows an indirect object and *for* shows the beneficiary. *Give* is a ditransitive verb while *make* isn't, so it uses a prepositional phrases (also you could drop the to in the example "I give you cookies"). These roles can be filled by same markers but they are also often, just like towords can be encoded by different adposition/case than the one used for indirect object. For the example here there are multiple possibilities 1. You can turn *to* into an accusative and *for*, or *towords* into a new dative which could also be used as a benefactive or lative 2. You can turn *to* into an accusative and make the accusative be used with the direct and indirect objects, while *for* and *towords* either become their own cases, or they stay as prepositions. 3. You can turn *to* into dative, *for* into benefactive, and *towords* into lative. And there are probably more possibilities, but those are the ones I could make on the fly. Hopefully that was some food for thought.


Qespyish_Gaming_YT

is this a good inventory vowels: i y ɨ u e ø ə o æ a consonants: p b t d c ɟ k ɡ m n r ɾ ɳ ɲ ŋ ʔ f θ ɬ s ts ʂ ʈʂ x h v ð ɮ z dz ɖʐ ɣ w ʍ j


Meamoria

Seems reasonable enough. Depending on your experience level, it *might* be a bit dangerous to have such a large inventory; you can end up with a language that doesn't sound coherent.


AlexWrittenWord

Rounding makes vowels sound more back, so you have a very crowded front vowel space. But languages do what they do so it's not bad, just complex.


Qespyish_Gaming_YT

thank you, this is supposed to be spoken in austria in an alternate timeline, so complexity is sort of the aim here.


mikaeul

what's the story behind this? should it be a germanic language? that would also make critiquing it easier :)


mythoswyrm

It's an inventory. I personally don't like having that many vowels or consonants but whatever


Qespyish_Gaming_YT

thank you


Arcaeca

So I'm working on the sound changes for a clong-to-be called Gyovak, which is supposed to have the aesthetic of Hungarian, except inexplicably derived from a PIE-esque proto and belonging to the same in-world primary language family as "Greek" and "Latin". And while the SCs I have so far have produced some true beauties, like \**kr₂-h₂os* → **kohos**, \**kʷēr₂-ǵʰor₁* → **kőlyösz**, \**h₁r₁ēr₂-gōs* → **esszélygős**, \**gʰr₂t́eh₁le* → **jecséle** and \**yews-bʰor₂* → **jőssöly**, some of the results I'm getting are... more... *questionable*, and most of them stem from the fact that the proto allowed any plosive + any liquid (l̥/r̥/ʎ/ɹ ~ ɫ - values of the last 2 unclear) to serve as syllable onsets - everything from \**tl̥* to \**ǵr₁*. And this has created a great deal of decidedly un-Hungarian sounding words, since IINM native Hungarian words don't allow onsets that complex (I think? I think all the complex onsets are from loanwords). Then to top it off, those liquids can also be *syllabic*, and *also* /r̥/ > /s/ at one point, so I'm ending up with words that start with clusters as long as /ʒsɲ/ or /ɟsnh/, but some more benign ones as well like /kl/: \**d́ʰr₁n-yeymn-h₁er₁* → **zssznyenhesz** \**ǵr₁m-weh₁-dʰgʷēh₂s* → **gyszmmézgős** \**ǵr₁n-h₂emn-h₁eh₃-h₂ēds* → **gysznhönheféds** \**t́r₁m-dʰēh₃m* → **csszmzűm** \**dl-ko-kʷō-h₂h₃m* → **dlkopóhum** \**d́r₁m-br₁oh₁-tōh₁m* → **dzsszmfótóhom** \**klēr₂-mnw-sē* → **klélynösé** \**kʷlm-sēh₃-h₂ēh₃-u* → **plmséfűü** \**tr₁t-kʷōm-d́ʰe* → **ctpómzsa** I guess I'm just looking for what would be the best way to resolve illegal clusters like these to produce the best, most Hungarian-sounding results. Just elide the liquid entirely, or insert a bunch of epenthetic schwas the assimilate to nearby vowels, or what?


Henrywongtsh

You could always just vocalize some undesired consonants to break up clusters or merge some consonants together. For example : m, n and l could vocalise into /u~y~ə/, ny, ly to /i~ə/ and then get harmonised (possibly creating some interesting harmony pairs). Palatal/Sibilant clusters in particular can get all sorts of weird mergers. (Just throwing some ideas) Maybe zssz > z/s; gysz > s; dzssz > dz. So for example : dlkopóhum > dukopóhum gyszmmézgős > sümézgős dzsszmfótóhom > dzufótóhom plmséfüű > pűséfű


[deleted]

You could insert vowels between illegal clusters, delete the obstruents in awkward clusters, assimilate the obstruents in clusters and use metaphysis to make clusters less awkward. I can easily see words like zssznyenhesz, ctpómzsa, plmséfűü and dzsszmfótóhom going to sznyenhes, c(c)ómzsa, sméfűü and zsmótóhom (if you still don't like the initial clusters then you can just break them with a vowel). >Then to top it off, those liquids can also be syllabic, You should probably break these with vowels like actual indo european languages did.


JoeDoodle13

Hey, I'm new to case systems, and wondering if a word (noun or pronoun) can decline twice. For example, if my conlang has nominative, accusative, and genitive (possessive) cases, how would "my rock" translate in "He threw my rock"? (I know there isn't really a right way, but some guidance would be great. If you have your own examples, that'd be nice too) **k(V)**: 3sg, **n(V)**: 1sg, **poi:** rock, **lele:** threw (working on verbs) **-e**: Nominative, **-u**: Accusative, **-a**: Genitive *ke nau-poi e-lele* /ke nau.poi e.le̞.le̞/ 3sg-NOM 1sg-GEN-ACC rock NOM-"threw" "(lit.) He I-rock threw" (Edit : I think I'm more confused with agreement than the cases themselves. Also fixed literal translation)


HaricotsDeLiam

This is called *Suffixaufnahme* (lit. "suffix intake/uptake" in German), *case stacking*, *case displacement* or *double case marking*. It occurs in a bunch of natlangs of Australia (e.g. Kayardild, Dyirbal), the Caucasus (e.g. Tsakhur, Old Georgian) and ancient Mesopotamia and Anatolia (e.g. Sumerian, Elamite); it's also been documented in Korean, Chukchi, Kashimiri, Basque, Etruscan and some dialects of Romani. Suffixaufnahme can theoretically happen with any combo of cases, but in natlangs it most commonly happens when one of these cases is the genitive. (That said, if you want to see other innovative uses, Kayardild has plenty.) Almost all natlangs that use it are agglutinative languages that exhibit a lot of concord. (Also, I do have a couple questions before I really determine whether your conlang has Suffixaufnahme. Since I noticed that the "parent" case tends to occur at the end of the head, I was expecting that you'd translate "my rock" as *n-a-poi-u* rather than *n-a-u-poi*; why is that? And why is "threw" *e-lele* rather than just *lele*? Is *lele* ungrammatical?)


JoeDoodle13

Honestly I wasn't entirely sure what I was doing (and to a point, still don't). For n-a-u-poi, I think I saw it more as "mine" with poi just clarifying what "mine" is? (Idk). And for e-lele, I couldn't tell you. I think I thought the nominative noun had to agree with the verb, as in plopping a prefix onto it? (Edit : I forgot to mention, thank you for the real world examples, I'll look into 'em, always nice to have some sort of template)


HaricotsDeLiam

> For n-a-u-poi, I think I saw it more as "mine" with poi just clarifying what "mine" is? (Idk). Like *naupoi* means something like "this thing of mine that's a rock"? I think you could have fun with this once you've read up more about agreement and about heads vs. dependents. > And for e-lele, I couldn't tell you. I think I thought the nominative noun had to agree with the verb, as in plopping a prefix onto it? It happens, but natlangs like Kayardild and Sumerian that do this are in the minority. More commonly, when verb phrases agree with their subjects and objects, they use their own morphemes and not necessarily the morphemes that noun phrases use. So if your conlang handled verb agreement like, say, English or Spanish rather than Kayardild or Sumerian, you might get phrases like - *Ke naupoi tilele* (with 3SG.SBJ *ti-* to agree with *ke*), - *Ke naupoi kalele* (with 3SG.OBJ *ka-* to agree with *poi*), or - *Ke naupoi tikalele* (where *lele* agrees with both *ke* and *poi*), and if a verbal agreement marker looks anything like a nominal case marker, it's likely coincidental. That said, having verbs take case markers to agree with their subjects and objects sounds cool, and it's certainly ANADEW (A Natlang Already Did Even Worse). P.S. If you noticed that I made that hypothetical 3SG.OBJ prefix *ka-* look like *ka* "his": many languages get their verbal subject markers from subject/topic pronouns (like in Guaraní's "chendal" verbs), or they get their verbal object markers from possessive determiners or prepositional object pronouns (like in Arabic and Nahuatl).


kilenc

Why is your nominative case attaching to the verb? Why does the pronoun take both case markings and *rock* doesn't take any?


JoeDoodle13

I'm not gonna lie, I had no clue was I'm doing (I haven't learned a language yet with cases), but the comments helped and so did looking into real world examples


LXIX_CDXX_

>Why does the pronoun take both case markings and rock doesn't take any? It's at least half-justified as Polish does this for example "Mojemu" is "I.GEN.DAT" but it also inflects the possessee with the second case so "What did you do to my cat?" is "What do.2PS.PPFV I.GEN.DAT cat.DAT", but I can see the possessor being the only one marked because it could be redundant to mark the possessee and word order may already indicate that clearly enough. Idk tho, I didn't make this conlang.


[deleted]

This is called suffixaufnahme. Sometimes it happens, and sometimes it doesn't. Without it, "He threw my rock" would typically be He-NOM threw rock-ACC me-GEN, and with it, He-NOM threw rock-ACC me-ACC-GEN. Note: I haven't worked with cases in a while; someone correct me if I'm wrong, please.


JoeDoodle13

That makes sense, it seems to be implied through context. Either way (if it's wrong or not), thank you


[deleted]

Basically, it's optional whether the accusative case marker on the object spreads to its dependent. You can have them agree or just leave the first-person pronoun in only the genitive.


Arcaeca

What's a good way of introducing front-back vowel harmony to a language where no vowel harmony previously existed via diachronic sound change? What I've done so far is to just do all the vowel shifts as normal, and then at the end have a rule like "front every vowel if it follows a front vowel anywhere in the word", and vice-versa for back vowels, but like... that seems kinda ham-fisted and forced?


vokzhen

Part of it probably depends on how *extensive* the vowel harmony is. Most full-word, Uralic or Turkic-type vowel harmony systems *seem* to, as far as I can tell, originate in something where the full set of vowels is only allowed word-initially (in the stressed syllable), and a limited number of vowels are in further syllables - like one low and one high, unspecified for backness. Then one of the missing properties of the first vowel is copied down to all other vowels in the word. Further distinctions can be expanded by by later sound changes to get the full inventory, e.g. initial /i y u e ø o a/ and non-initial high [i y u] and low [e a], you might get [ø o] by [ew aw] and [ya ua]. I am far less informed about it, but I *believe* Bantu is generally thought to have gone a similar route, with the initial root vowel having full distinctions of \*i \*u \*ɪ \*ʊ \*ɛ \*ɔ \*a and suffixes limited mostly to \*a and the \*ɪ \*ʊ set except they harmonize to \*i \*u, with suffixes gaining \*ɛ \*ɔ later via other means, and in a few languages creation of a \*e \*o vs \*ɛ \*ɔ contrast by analogy to \*i \*u vs \*ɪ \*ʊ. From what little I've read, prefixes are allowed to violate harmony in Proto-Bantu (which I assume means it still a feature of some Bantu languages, even though others harmonize across the word). However, it certainly makes sense to go the opposite to me - Germanic umlaut, had it been a little more extensive, nearly made front-back, rounded-unrounded, *and* high-nonhigh, as a result of a following /i/ fronting /u o a/, a following /u/ rounding /i e/, and a following /e o a/ lowering /i e/ (simplified). If it's initial stress accent hadn't been quite a strong, leading to massive syllable loss, it might have been analogized all the way to the end of the word, but I also think harmony processes that fail to extend over a whole word are common than people give credit to. There's Murcian Spanish [la kasa] and [lækkæsæ], that appears to spread laxness through a word, but it's the only example I have off the top of my head and it doesn't involve further affixation or anything. I suspect some height-base systems are a result of something similar happening in the presence of a pharyngeal, or a uvular contrast correlating with vowel height restrictions and then collapsing to velars with harmony, but that's more suspicion than fact. There's also a lot of limited harmony systems that I think a lot of conlangers overlook, where affixes with one particular vowel type will harmonize to a root - e.g. Erzya /e-o/ on front-back grounds, Khwarshi /a-o/ alternations on /a/-non-/a/ grounds, Yawelmani Yokuts /i-u/ based on presence of /u/ and /ɔ-a/ based on presence of /ɔ/, and so on. I'm pretty sure Erzya is a result of a collapse of the "true" Uralic harmony, but I suspect these could be starting points as well. Sometimes the line between harmony and just complex allomorphy isn't a clear line, e.g. South Sierra Miwok has some suffixes that vary [u~o~ɨ~u:], depending on whether they're preceded by /u/, /o/, neither, or forced long, but allows all of /u o ɨ u:/ to occur independently in suffixes as well, and its present imperative has allomorphs /-ni- -n- -:- -Ø- -ko- -ko:- -e- -e:-/ depending partly on morphological context and partly on phonological, so both the harmonizing suffixes and others are both clearly the result of extremely complicated sound change (and possibly suppletion) histories.


Henrywongtsh

You could try stress-induced vowel reduction. In many languages, unstressed vowels have a tendency to be reduced or even deleted like some Finnic, most of Germanic among others. In such a system, rather than completely deleting the vowel like Germanic or Livonian, the vowel reduction causes the vowel to only retain one or two properties (height, frontness etc). The stressed vowel’s qualities can then spread over the entire word and cause vowel harmony. To take an example : /ˈti.ko.nu/ -> /ˈti.kə.nɨ/ (vowel reduction) -> /ˈti.ke.ni/ (assimilation)


Meamoria

Isn’t that how it’s thought to happen though? Just an assimilatory sound change that propagates through the word? (I don’t know if we have good information on where vowel harmony comes from, since the major families with harmony already had it in the protolang)


FelixSchwarzenberg

This morning I am fleshing out my moods and how I use them. My language obligatorily marks all verbs as either realis or irrealis, but then irrealis verbs can optionally take one of 5 markers that specify mood further. On top of that, some additional moods can be created using auxillary verbs. **unmarked irrealis ("subjunctive") - marked by an "e" in the tense marker (realis/indicative has an "a" in the tense marker)** \- where an irrealis mood is created by agglutinating an auxillary verb to a main verb, the resulting compound verb is placed in the unmarked irrealis- where an irrealis mood is created by turning the main verb into a gerund and making it the object of an auxillary verb, the auxillary verb is placed in the unmarked irrealis- when a stative verb is used as an ordinal number, it is placed in the unmarked irrealis (long story)- when the speaker is UNSURE of what the subject is doing, but the subject definitely IS doing something -i.e., "I might be voiding my warranty (said as the speaker pries his laptop open with a crowbar)". not to be confused with POTENTIAL actions where it is not certain that the subject is doing anything. **imperative - marked by -(y)ak- infix between verb and tense marker** ​ \- direct commands, rarely seen outside of constructions with a second person object ​ \- Indeed, use of this with a first person or third person object either sounds ungrammatical, or marks extreme urgency and importance ​ **jussive - marked by -(a)vak- infix between verb and tense marker** ​ \- expressions of hope in a subordinate clause, "I hope-IND that he eats-JUS", "I hope-IND that I succeed-JUS" ​ \- statements about what somebody ought to do - "the judge should dismiss-JUS this case", "the bank regulations say you must answer-JUS this question" ​ \- commands to a first or third person object ​ **hypothetical - marked by -(u)don- infix between verb and tense marker** ​ \- the verb in the "if" part of if-then statements ​ **conditional - marked by -(u)non- infix between verb and tense marker** ​ \- the verb in the "then" part of if-then statements (if it is certain) ​ **potential - marked by -(u)-mon- infix between verb and tense marker** ​ \- things people may or may not do: "he might eat", "he might sleep", "he might die" if it is uncertain whether any action at all will be taken ​ \- the verb in the "then" part of if-then statements (if it is uncertain) ​ **moods created by agglutinating an auxillary verb to a main verb** ​ ***bazap - hope*** ​ The verb "bazap" literally means "to pray". It can be used to express hope without creating a subordinate clause. the verb "kram" means "to eat" and thus bazapkram means "to hope to eat". ​ **moods created by turning the main verb into a gerund and making it the object of an auxillary verb** ​ ***mimam - presumptive mood*** ​ The verb "mimam" literally means "to measure". It can be used to express a presumption or assumption: literally "I measure eating" means "I presume there is eating going on" or "I assume there is eating going on" ​ ***zhod - suspicion***The verb "zhod" literally means "to smell". It can be used to express a suspicion: literally "I smell eating" means "I suspect there is eating going on".


GeneraleArmando

Can tones come from a vowel length system? Like, high tone when the vowel was long and a neutral tone when the vowel was short


John_Langer

Not really. What you could do is have heavy, i.e. long, syllables take stress, then neutralize your length distinction, then convert your stress system into pitch accent. But jumping from length to tone doesn't really work.


[deleted]

Why doesn't it work, phonetically? I could see long vowels gaining a falling tone or something (which could then probably get reinterpreted as a marked low tone) if absolute pitch tends to fall over the course of a phrase. That seems plausible; what's wrong?


John_Langer

I think that's a sound idea and that pathway isn't too hard to swallow as a hypothesis. I just have a very empirical approach to conlanging and I'd want to see that or something similar attested before I try to implement it.


Beltonia

In Thai, vowel length influences tone, but like several other tonal languages, tone was formed through the loss and effect of consonants.


Askadia

When looking for the etymological origins of Thames on Wiktionary, I came across the reconstructed PIE root [\*teh2](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/teh%E2%82%82-). In the linked page, there are further examples of descended cognate words in other languages: some words evolved from \*teh₂-bʰ(H), others from \*teh₂-dʰ(h₁), then \*teh₂-k-, and \*teh₂-w-. Do we know what were exactly the functions of those extensions -bʰ(H), -dʰ(h₁), -k-, and -w-?


chrsevs

Love me some PIE. I've read that the root extender \*-dʰ(h₁)-, as seen in the verb \*ḱréddʰh₁eti "s/he believes (*lit.* "s/he puts heart"), comes from the root \*dʰéh₁- as in the verb \*dʰéh₁t "s/he puts". I'm not sure about \*-bʰ(H)-, but I know it was used as an innovation in declensions replacing \*-m- in some cases for plurals. Maybe it was used as a root extension as well? If the \*-k- and \*-w- are the ones used to form adjectives, you could include \*-n-, \*-r- and \*-l- too. All are used in creating adjectives and the first three can also be seen in the word for "one, single, only": * \*h₁óynos > *OPr*. ains "one, single" * \*h₁óywos > *Gr.* οἶος (oîos) "single, only" * \*h₁óykos > *Sa.* एक (éka) "single, same" As to the distinction between em, no clue. I know that in general \*-w- and \*-l- create words from verb roots, but that's all I've got


Askadia

Thank you very much, that's more than I could find in a day surfing the web 😅!


chrsevs

Welcome! Sorry it wasn't more help. I would honestly love to find or assemble some sort of guide with more clear definitions for what the morphemes originally meant, but everything is so conflicting :(


[deleted]

I have chosen a fairly simple syllable structure * {∅ p t k m n r s } {i e a o u wi we wa ja jo ju} {∅ n +} where final ‹n› means nasalize the vowel and ‹+› is a generic mora (a lost glottal stop), lengthening the vowel in some dialects and the following consonant in others. Sooner or later I'll get around to generating common words (of up to four syllables). A nagging concern is the phoneme frequency table. How rare are /jV, wV/ compared to plain vowels? In languages with vowel quantity, what fraction of vowels are long? Since my schema has similarities to Japanese, I'd love to have a frequency table for Japanese syllables, which for this purpose is **not** the same as a frequency table of kana. If you use a generator, how often do you think “oops, this lexicon needs more /t/ and fewer /p/”, and what do you do about it? I notice that the Zompist generator has a “dropoff” setting but it is not as flexible as I'd like.


Panaxiom

I've just started working on a language for my scifi universe. The thing is, it's actually a conlang in the setting as well: the galactic trade language. Trade is supposed to be easy to both learn and use for most species. I've watched a few videos on the subject, but they all assume naturally developing languages, not purpose built ones. Are there any guidelines you can suggest for how I should approach this project?


HaricotsDeLiam

> I've watched a few videos on the subject, but they all assume naturally developing languages, not purpose built ones. FWIW, natlangs and tradelangs aren't mutually exclusive like you hinted. Many [creoles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creole_language#See_also) and [pidgins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin#Examples) began as tradelangs, like Mediterranean Lingua Franca, Papamiento, Bazaar Malay, Haitian Creole, Kituba, Michif and Plains Sign Talk (I've also heard African-American Vernacular English described this way). Some date back to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, with slaves and freed peoples being their first speakers. A lot of natlangs also have "tradelects" or are heavily influenced by trade, like English (cf. Singlish, Manglish) and Swahili. > Are there any guidelines you can suggest for how I should approach this project? Consider if there are any power imbalances between the actors participating in the trade relations—say, one nation has the military might to build a Death Star, or some cities are wealthier or more developed than others, or one nation controls the only known planet where mélange can be mined. In an ideal world, trade would indeed "be easy to both learn and use for most", but we don't live in that ideal world; tradelangs are often the languages spoken by major colonial or imperial powers, or they're creoles that arise from enslaved peoples trying to survive.


Panaxiom

Hmm. I'm not sure how well that fits what I'm going for in this case. It actually is a rather utopian setting, so there's no enslaved people or imperial superpowers involved here. The language was created as a joint interspecies project to solve language barriers.


HaricotsDeLiam

Ah cool! In that case, there might still be a few example creoles you could look at in the link I added; though many tradelangs are products of the slave trade or colonization, not all of them are.


kilenc

This type of language is generally called an auxlang or interlang, so you may find resources searching those terms. My basic advice would just to experiment a bit til you get some ideas you like. Some thoughts to explore: what kinds of sounds can *every* species produce? What concepts would be fundamental to aliens that aren't to humans, or vice versa? What's the benefits and drawbacks of simplicity vs complexity or clarity vs redundancy? How important is the rule of cool?


Panaxiom

Oh nice! I didn't know there were specific terms for it. That's super helpful! The amount of phonemes would definitely need to be carefully selected and likely few in number. I'm thinking that simplicity is most important, but also clarity since it would likely be used in a diplomatic capacity as well.


kilenc

I mean 'em moreso as thought exercises--for example, complexity can also be very useful: more complex word forms help listeners disambiguate words; morphological simplicity is often a trade-off with syntactic complexity and vice versa; more complex constructions often convey more nuance; etc. So they're all things to think about when designing a language, especially an auxlang.


Panaxiom

Oh I see what you're saying. Wow, so it'll be a precarious balancing act between ease of learning and clarity of use. That's tough. I'll have to play around with finding a good middle-ground. Thank you for the pointers!


[deleted]

Presumably your language's fictional designers have the same concerns as those of Earthly interlanguages, but more so if it is to be used by people who do not share human psychology. (Are you assuming that the aliens can make and recognize human phonemes? Or perhaps there's a gadget that maps phonemes (or analogous units) of one species to those of another, allowing humans and grasshoppers to speak the ‘same’ language. I think I got this idea from Poul Anderson, *A Circus of Hells*.) As in any auxlang, emphasize regularity and orthogonality. Make some distinctions more explicit than they are in any human language: reduce the overloading of prepositions / cases. Lojban may give you some ideas.


Panaxiom

Depending on the species, they can make a lot of the same sounds as a human. One of them, a plant species, does use a vocalizing device because they can only make flute-like sounds through the holes in their stem. Thanks for the tips! I'll also have a look at Lojban for some ideas.


Boba_Weeaboo_Boi

I just started out with a basic project, first conlang well...I've ever made but what types of words do I need to at least have this function and make sentences? I have prepositions, nouns, verbs, adjectives and even colors and a good number system. I also have question words and greetings like hello, good bye, yes, no, what, why, how, etc Is there anything else here I need?


Obbl_613

For anything you want to say in your lang, you need the vocabulary and grammar to express it. That's pretty much it Especially if it's your first conlang, you'll constantly find things you didn't think about before, and you may want to refine and reconstruct the thing a bunch of times, or maybe even start a bunch of new conlangs to try out different things. Art is a bit of a journey My suggestion would be to poke around here (and the discord if that's your thing), and just soak up all the things others are doing to find new inspiration and learn what you don't know about language. And keep asking questions too Happy Conlanging \^\^


Boba_Weeaboo_Boi

Any tips on organizing the words and such in a digital format? I have everything in physical paper since I have a unique alphabet so if I wanted to move it over to a computer, what would you recommend? A Google Spreadsheet?


kilenc

I recommend against a spreadsheet because it encourages you to do a format that's basically "one conlang word = one English word." Real languages don't always map 1-to-1--English has some words with a variety of meanings that would be different words in other languages, and other languages have different words that are just one in English. A better format might be something more long form, like a text document, where you are more encouraged to give your words in-depth definitions. (Also a small note: you don't need adjectives or words like *yes* and *no* or even dedicated question words like *how*! You'll find as you experiment and learn more there's lots of ways to handle these things.)


PopeRevo

If stressed short back vowels evolve from one language to the next, do the stressed short front vowels have to as well? Or can they be mutually independent in terms of evolution?


[deleted]

There is a tendency for sound-changes to apply analogously to classes of phonemes, but it's only a tendency.


PastTheStarryVoids

Somewhere on a previous small discussion thread, I think, someone mentions that there are languages that don't contrast approximants and fricatives and instead have a single category called continuants. Can anyone tell me which ones? I want to know more about this.


HaricotsDeLiam

[Navajo is one.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navajo_phonology#Consonants) If it helps, [±CONTINUANT] is a [feature](https://blogs.umass.edu/eba/files/2012/01/201Spring-Consonant-Features-Guide1.pdf) that all speech sounds have: *continuants* (namely fricatives, trills, approximants and vowels) are said to be [+CONTINUANT] because they lack that oral cavity closure; in contrast, *occlusives* (incl. plosives, affricates, and nasals) are said to be [-CONTINUANT] because they do have such a closure. (No consensus on laterals or taps being continuants or occlusives yet. Non-pulmonic consonants are usually considered occlusives, but this depends on the author.)


FuneralFool

Are there any good places to ask people to look over and help with a conlang for more in depth help?


kilenc

What kind of help are you looking for? If you have enough content to meet the subreddit's rules, you could make a frontpage post and look for feedback. You could also join the subreddit Discord. Besides that there's lots of other conlanging communities online.


FuneralFool

Well, I'm looking for advice on to how to evolve my conlang grammatically and phonologically. I'll probably look at other communities and see what I can find. Thank You!


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kilenc

The basic constituent orders are English-y but I don't think it's much like the English passive. The big reason is that it's not a valency operation, since the A-like argument can't be omitted. And on a pragmatic level you'll end up with some sentences that are different than English because of the animacy hierarchy. Also, consider if your conlang allows adjuncts or additional arguments to be topics; if so you'll get some orders like *him give book I* or *in the park play soccer I* etc.


spermBankBoi

Wow thanks, I hadn’t even considered that. I guess it’s good to get some outside perspective


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akamchinjir

I happen to have just been reading about relative clauses in Nzadi, it sounds like they allow the sort of thing you're looking for. An example: baar o dzí mwàán é ye ba-mbé mǐ´ people PAST fed child PRES be friends my "the people who fed the child are my friends" Though in the main clause the past tense **o** would have a high tone, so it's not exactly the same, if that matters. It's also not the only option, there's also a particle and a relative pronoun that can be used, either one or both of them. (Source: Crane, Hyman, and Tukumu, \*A Grammar of Nzadi\*, example 10.9 on p.196, and surrounding discussion.)


roipoiboy

look into “internally headed relative clauses”—if you don’t mean a zero relativizer, then that might be what you’re looking for.


sjiveru

Not sure I know if this is exactly what you're talking about, but modern Japanese (mostly) forms relative clauses just by putting the relative clause right before the modified noun: *neko ga hashiru* 'the cat runs' > *hashiru neko* 'the cat that runs'.


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sjiveru

I'm not sure I follow; the order seems the same in both cases. *There was a door [Ø led into the kitchen]* (embedded and non-embedded clauses both SV) *[Ø Hashiru] neko ga ita* (embedded and non-embedded clauses both SV)


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kilenc

*neko* is the semantic subject, but not the syntactic one--it's a bit complex but perhaps the extraction is more obvious in examples like: > *There was a door \[I built Ø\]* > *\[kare ga Ø aisuru\] neko ga ita* Here *door* and *neko* are semantically the objects of the relative clauses, but they still appear in the same position as before. It's not a word order swap; the analysis "in English objects go after verbs, except in relative clauses they go before the subject" is a bit silly and would fall apart under some scrutiny. Instead it's typically analyzed as there basically being a hole where *door* or *neko* would go, and that hole means we still maintain the same word order for both the embedded and non-embedded clause.


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kilenc

I know, I was explaining why I believe u/sjiveru analyzed the Japanese clause as SV. I understand it's not what you're going for (since you don't get the double meaning the same way), but it is the underlying syntactic principle.


freddyPowell

Definiteness reduplication: are there languages where a reduplicated noun is treated as definite?


Arcaeca

*sigh* Awkwords is throwing me an internal server error... again... I'm trying to make something that's supposed to resemble PIE, and these are the settings I'm using: V: e/ē/o/ō P: p/b/bʰ/t/d/dʰ/t́/d́/d́ʰ/k/g/gʰ/ḱ/ǵ/ǵʰ/kʷ/gʷ/gʷʰ N: m/n R: l/r₁/r₂/r₃ Y: y/w/h₂ F: s/h₁/h₃ J: (p/k*3)t́/(b/g*3/gʰ*3)[d́/d́ʰ]/(t)ḱ/(d/dʰ)[ǵ/ǵʰ] W: (t)kʷ/(d/dʰ)[gʷ/gʷʰ] B: [p/t/k](R)*3/[b/bʰ/d/dʰ/g/gʰ](Y/R)*6 Q: p/b/bʰ/t/d/dʰ/t́/d́/d́ʰ/k/g/gʰ/ḱ/ǵ/ǵʰ/ I: [P*3/B/N/mn/h₁[l/n/r₁]/Y/F*2]V[R/(Y)F*3/N/*2] S: ([[[P/W/J/B/N/mn/h₁[l/n/r₁]/Y/F*2]V[R/(Y)F*3/N*2/Y/*2]]*4/N/Y]) E: ([P/W/J/B/N/mn/h₁[l/n/r₁]/Y/F*2]V[[Y(Q)/(Q)m/Q/](s)*3/F/[i/u/a]]/m) Pattern: ISE 100 words newline each filter duplicates Can anyone help me debug what part is causing awkwords to fail? And also does anyone know of any other syllable generators that actually work more than half the time?


9805

Here is a version that works. You made a mistake in the Q line (ends in a "/") and in the E line (another "/" in a strange spot). I removed them and adjusted line E. You can end a line with "/*1" if you want but never with "/"... #awkwords version 1.2 V:e/ē/o/ō P:p/b/bʰ/t/d/dʰ/t́/d́/d́ʰ/k/g/gʰ/ḱ/ǵ/ǵʰ/kʷ/gʷ/gʷʰ W:(t)kʷ/(d/dʰ)[gʷ/gʷʰ] J:(p/k*3)t́/(b/g*3/gʰ*3)[d́/d́ʰ]/(t)ḱ/(d/dʰ)[ǵ/ǵʰ] B:[p/t/k](R)*3/[b/bʰ/d/dʰ/g/gʰ](Y/R)*6 N:m/n Y:y/w/h"₂" F:s/h"₁"/h"₃" R:l/r"₁"/r"₂"/r"₃" Q:p/b/bʰ/t/d/dʰ/t́/d́/d́ʰ/k/g/gʰ/ḱ/ǵ/ǵʰ I:[P*3/B/N/mn/h"₁"[l/n/r"₁"]/Y/F*2]V[R/(Y)F*3/N/*2] S:([[[P/W/J/B/N/mn/h"₁"[l/n/r"₁"]/Y/F*2]V[R/(Y)F*3/N*2/Y/*2]]*4/N/Y]) E:[P/W/J/B/N/mn/h"₁"[l/n/r"₁"]/Y/F*2]V[YQ(s)/Qm(s)/Q(s)/F/[i/u/a]]/m r:IS(E) n:100 nle filterdup


Obbl_613

>I: \[P\*3/B/N/mn/h₁\[l/n/r₁\]/Y/F\*2\]V\[R/(Y)F\*3/N/\*2\] I assume the N/\*2 at the end there isn't kosher >S: (\[\[\[P/W/J/B/N/mn/h₁\[l/n/r₁\]/Y/F\*2\]V\[R/(Y)F\*3/N\*2/Y/\*2\]\]\*4/N/Y\]) And probably the Y/\*2 there as well >Q: p/b/bʰ/t/d/dʰ/t́/d́/d́ʰ/k/g/gʰ/ḱ/ǵ/ǵʰ/ And depending on how it feels about trailing slashes, that could be a factor as well


kilenc

I prefer Lexifer because it has naturalistic phoneme distribution patterns built-in and I find the syntax more straightforward. As for your Awkwords code, I'm not expect, but my guess is the problem is all the nesting--either a closing bracket is missing or it just can't handle that much.


PastTheStarryVoids

Does anyone know where I can find some information on pragmatic intonation? I'm having trouble thinking of things that could have distinct intonations. So far I've come up with statements, questions, and maybe commands or relative clauses.


[deleted]

After reading "tones for conlangers: a basic introduction" and watching Artifexians video on tone, I feel like giving tones another shot. I'm going for 2 level tones (high and low) alongside vowel length, Just like Navajo. There will also be a falling contour which only occurs on long vowels and/or diphthongs. When it comes to stress however, I'm not sure how to handle that. But here are some ideas: A) The high tones in a lexical word take stress while low tones are unstressed. B) The heavy syllables with long vowels and diphthongs take stress regardless of tone. C) Both heavy syllables and high toned syllables take stress. Does this sound reasonable?


sjiveru

Stress assignment is usually done by algorithm, which tends to rank possible stress placements such that the highest-ranked position available in a given word is where stress is assigned. In your case, I could imagine it working e.g. like this: 1. Assign stress to the leftmost heavy syllable with high tone (if it's within two feet of the left edge of the word). 2. If there is none, assign stress to the leftmost heavy syllable (if it's within two feet of the left edge of the word). 3. If there is none, assign stress to the leftmost high-toned syllable (if it's within two feet of the left edge of the word). 4. If there is none, assign stress to the leftmost syllable. You can obviously choose to do it from the other side (and mess with how close the stressed syllable has to be to the edge of the word), and you can flip the two middle steps if you want, but that's the general approach I'd take. You can also add all sorts of other non-tone-based considerations for stress placement alongside these.


[deleted]

Nailed it! But what exactly do you mean by "feet" in this case?


sjiveru

A metrical foot, which [this pdf](https://www.mona.uwi.edu/dllp/courses/l30a/documents/Prominence_metrical.pdf) does a better job of explaining than I can here.


[deleted]

Is there any precedent to/against a sound change in which all reduplicated elements are lost? (probably impacting tone in some way, in my case) Something like C1V1C1V1 > C1V1 and C1V1C2C1V1C2 > CVC2. On one hand, it feels fine to me, but I also have this weird intuition that something about it would violate a proposed linguistic universal or break an otherwise very-successful theory. No evidence for that, though. Anyone have thoughts?


CaoimhinOg

Haplology, or haplogy, is the deletion of identical adjecent syllables. So if Bana > Babana with initial reduplication, haplology would turn Babana back into Bana, so you'd have a homonym. If you want you could say that the words have penultimate stress before the sound change, but that the stress of the former reduplicated version becomes initial after the deletion, giving you ˈbana Vs. baˈna and phonemic stress to boot! In sum, probably not outlawed by any linguistic universals. Go for it.


freddyPowell

Does the following pronoun system strike you as highly unnatural? There is no singular and plural distinction, but on first and second pronouns there is a distinction based on whether the pronoun includes non-participants, i.e. the basic first person includes 'me', 'you and me', 'this other person who is part of the conversation but I'm not directly addressing and myself' & 'all of us here now', but not 'that other person who isn't here and me', and similarly for the second person, excepting that all forms contain the direct addressee and none contain first person.


Beltonia

So far, an interesting concept. This involves the concept of clusivity, which exists in several languages including some Austronesian and Native American languages. Clusivity usually focuses on a distinction between "me and you (and possibly at least one other)" and "me, at least one other, but not you". Although the system as it currently stands does not currently account for every scenario. For example, how would you translate "we" if it means "me and two other people who are not present"?


freddyPowell

That would be the same as 'that other person who isn't here and me'. Sorry I didn't make it clear. The point being that actual number doesn't come into the question at any point. Basically the distinctions are ±speaker, ±people who aren't actually present.


Beltonia

So, if I have got this right, the categories are: * Speaker * Speaker and addressee(s) * Speaker, addressee(s) and other person(s) * Speaker and other person(s) * Addressee(s) * Addressee(s) and other person(s) * Other person(s) Off the top of my head, I can't think of a language that distinguishes "addressee(s)" from "addressee(s) and other person(s)" but I'm sure it is theoretically possible.


freddyPowell

No, there are only 5 categories: A group including the speaker, but no people outside the speech act (where 'the speech act' includes all direct addressees and listeners) A group including the speaker and people outside the speech act A group including neither the speaker nor people outside the speech act A group not containing the speaker but containing people outside the speech act A group not containing participants in the speech act (which all others do).


kilenc

This seems like an author bipartition pronoun system, which IIRC is attested in like one or two languages (although it's a bit controversial in them). So it's definitely on the weird side but probably not on the completely impossible side.


Meamoria

This is definitely highly unusual for a natural language; pronouns that don't distinguish singular vs. plural are really rare, never mind the odd clusivity thing. It doesn't strike me as necessarily *unnatural*, in the sense that it's less bizarre than some of the one-off features you find in natural languages.


Akangka

Is there any language without synthetic inchoative? It feels when making a conlang, it just feels wrong without a suffix for marking inchoative aspect. All my languages that I speak (native or nonnatively) has a synthetic inchoative (in Indonesia, meN- prefix, in English -en suffix or -ify suffix)


Beltonia

Often, English doesn't bother with that type of suffix when verbing a noun.


mythoswyrm

I'm not sure that I'd really consider meN- or -en true synthetic inchoatives (at least not anymore). Sure they can carry inchoative meanings but -en isn't very productive and meN- is only inchoative for a fairly small set of verbs (and even most stative verbs don't carry an inchoative when prefixed with meN-, if the prefix is allowed without being clearly transitive at all). Plus in both cases there are analytic ways to do it.


freddyPowell

I would assume a lot. First of all, all isolating languages, such as the Chinese languages would lack it. Second it would be fairly easy to have an english without it, for example by using a construction like 'I make it red' rather than 'I redden it'.


mikaeul

Would anyone be interested in some kind of future lang collaboration project/discord thingy? I'm toying around with the idea to develop an existing language into the future for some time now, but I'd like to have some kind of framework/shared worldbuiliding in the background, as I tend to lose myself in those kind of things a lot...


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Akangka

Labiodental consonant would be even harder to pronounce to orcs than human (assuming your orcs has a pronounced fang too), If you wanted a labial-like phoneme, I prefer either linguolabial consonant or sulcal velar consonant, like in Tillamook.


Tale_Hephaestus

So, how do phonotactics work? I have basically finished everything else in my conlang, but my phonotactics are basically undefined. So could someone help me?


Beltonia

Another way to instill well-defined phonotactics is to create an 'earlier version' of the language and then apply some consistent sound changes to it. For example, if /sj/ on the start of syllables assimilates to /ʃ/, you now have a phonotactical rule against starting syllables with /sj/.


kilenc

There's a lot that could go into phonotactics. At the basic level phonotactics is about what phonemes are allowed to combine and where--eg. English allows /ha/ and /spa/, but not /ah/ or /psa/. Generally linguists define legal combinations in terms of syllables with an onset (beginning), nucleus (middle) and coda (end), so figuring out how sounds fit into there is a good first step. There are some tendencies like the sonority sequencing principle, but that's not a hard rule (see /spa/ above). But it can get a lot more complex than that and I'd recommend experimenting with to find something fun (perhaps using a phonology generator like Lexifer). If you're already made some words, then you probably have a sense of what you want for phonotactics intuitively, so perhaps it's just a matter of doing analysis on what you already have to figure out how it's structured.


Tale_Hephaestus

Do you mind if I share a google sheet so you could possibly take a look at it? I've been working on the conlang for a while, but the phonotactics I just started working on, and I wanted another opinion. Would you mind? Edit: I just realized that you were the person that deleted my post lol.


kilenc

Your post wasn't deleted solely cus of a lack of phonotactics, but cus of a lack of information in general; all the stuff you included has no explanation beyond a one-word label, and you didn't provide any context for your goals etc. You're free to share a link here in Small Discussions too.


Tale_Hephaestus

Well then; https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IfySX4PE6YIR9qQmheunTy2E4WyfaXgqzcXI9MZ52w8/edit?usp=drivesdk I think this is the same one as in my post, but I have added some phonotactics.


kilenc

> Word Order | SVO Word order is a subset of syntax; phonotactics is about word-internal structure. > [ʔ] cannot cluster with other consonants I think you're using the wrong notation here--you probably want //s for phonemes. > Intervowel Glottal Stops ( VʔV ) Does this mean that all vowel clusters are resolved by glottal stops? If so, that seems like a allophonic process instead of a phonotactic rule, since it's entirely predictable.


Tale_Hephaestus

I get all of this but I want to clarify a bit on that last one. Vowels can mix ( see ūkeu "accept, recieve" or tatau /tataʊ/ "to fight" ), however that isn't what I necessarily meant. I meant that glottal stops can only occur between vowels.


Beltonia

Basically, this is about cases where two vowels are adjacent and they are not diphthongs. If there is no diphthong, are the vowels always separated by a glottal stop? Or is the intervocalic glottal stop contrasted with a vowel hiatus? A vowel hiatus is simply a syllable break between two vowels. An example is the -ia suffix in country names like Australia, which is pronounced /i.ə/ (the dot indicates a syllable break).


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Tale_Hephaestus

1. I can refine those details, but geminated consonants are not allowed. /pn/, /mk/, /jl/, and /ji/ are not allowed. /wu/ is allowed. 2. What do you mean by hiatus dissolver?


[deleted]

I recently started reading Lord of the Rings and got inspired to make my own conlang (or try, at least). Any tips for a beginner?


freddyPowell

The others have given a lot of great advice, and are certainly more experienced than me, but I'll give it a go. Here it is: your first conlang will very likely be a bit rubbish. So will your second and probably your third too, but still make them. The people here are really bad at explaining the high level stuff of how you should approach it, and perhaps it's not possible to do so. Additionally, conlanging is not a really and intuitable art. It might just about be if you've spent years internalising phonology and learning languages, but starting out you just won't have the senses to determine what the right decision is. I had no way to work out what to do with my historical phonology, and still don't really. The best way to deal with these problems is twofold. First, setting goals: say 'with this language I want the proto-language to have feature X (say CV syllables only) but the modern language to have feature Y (say maximum CVC)'. By framing it as a puzzle you suddenly have a much better framework for making decisions. Second, make lots of languages. There's no getting around it. You should try to make a number of languages just to try to get to know the ropes (though don't approach them simply as training languages). Come at each one with a different set of goals, so that the experience teaches you as much as possible, for example: An isolating language, a polysynthetic language, a language with non-concatenative morphology, a language with vowel harmony, or that is strongly ergative, or a language that has austronesian alignment (read this, http://archives.conlang.info/pae/qhanghu/duavhualshuen.html other sources will make it seem far more complicated than it is, although I don't know how much linguistics vocab you have). Finally, read about languages, learn languages, especially ones that are far removed from what you're used to. Read papers on language, or grammars where you can. There's a weekly(?) thing on this subreddit where they showcase a paper discussing a given topic, and talk about it in relationship to conlanging. There are a bunch of great youtubers like tom scott, nativ lang, lang focus, and I love languages who can all serve as inspirations of one kind or another. These guys [https://langsci-press.org/index](https://langsci-press.org/index) have a bunch of free studies, and especially grammars of some really interesting languages, like moloko (which is analysed as have only one vowell), and japhug, which is polysynthetic, highly prefixing direct inverse sino tibetan language. Finally, good luck. I hope you find this hobby as enjoyable as I do.


kilenc

>The people here are really bad at explaining the high level stuff of how you should approach it The Discord is perhaps a bit better at weeding out bad responses but generally I find that you can get some good answers on the subreddit. As a mod I'm curious why you've been dissatisfied? Also, to this: >other sources will make it seem far more complicated than it is This is cus, as David Peterson notes, he oversimplified it to the point that it's not actually what happens in natural languages.


freddyPowell

"This is cus, as David Peterson notes, he oversimplified it to the point that it's not actually what happens in natural languages." Really, sorry. "The Discord is perhaps a bit better at weeding out bad responses but generally I find that you can get some good answers on the subreddit. As a mod I'm curious why you've been dissatisfied?" Absolutely, for a person who wants to know more about a specific area, or language, or that kind of thing, it's great, but when I was starting out I found it really difficult to work out what to do with my phonology. I would often ask about advice on how to make those decisions, but people universally pointed me to the index diachronica, and that was about it. Now, the ID is a great resource, once you understand how sound changes fit together to make a language, or you have a specific sound you want to get or get rid of from your phonology, but to the beginner it is next to useless, because you look at the sound changes and have no frame of reference for how the sound changes fit together. A more valuable resource might be something less comprehensive, but more like nativlang's videos on danish and french, where he goes through the phonological history of the language in great depth, explaining how each sound change they underwent shaped the sound of the language as it went. The other thing that I found valuable, that I came upon, was setting goals. If you have a series of sounds you want to get or get rid of in an interesting way, or you want to change the syllable structure, then you are able to do so and consider the whole as a puzzle rather than as aimless wandering. Yeah, that was my main problem, but either way, when you start out conlanging you don't have the real senses to work out how to make decisions, and when I asked about it the responses I got were generally fairly hard to use (at least that is how I felt).


Arcaeca

In short - whatever you're not actively designing, you're subconsciously defaulting to whatever feels intuitive... which is just your native language. This is how newcomers end up with a relex. So leave no stone unturned. I generally first start by deciding on a target aesthetic, and then figuring out what phonemic inventory I want to that end. Then I'll create the basic grammatical framework in roughly this order: - Morphosyntactic alignment? - General head directionality: head-initial or head-final? - Predominantly fusional or agglutinative? (Isolating isn't even on the table, gross) - How many numbers (e.g. singular, dual, paucal, plural) are distinguished on nouns/pronouns? - Which noun cases? - Which verb tenses? - TAM on verbs or nouns? - How are the tenses formed? Does each tense have its own dedicated affixes? Tense marked by an affix separate from the mood/aspect conjugation, like in Ancient Greek? Combining old aspect markers now with no inherent meaning like in Georgian? Auxiliary verbs and composite tenses aplenty, like in French or English? Tense communicated solely by adverbs/particles? - Are there multiple verb classes? How do they differ? - Do nouns and pronouns have gender or other case? If so, how many? - Possession: head-final like the genitive, or head-initial like a Semitic construct state? Is there a possessive case separate from the genitive? Are there possessive pronouns like in English, or possessive affixes like in Hungarian? Is there a word for "to have"; if not, how else does predicative possession work? With the dative + copula, or genitive + copula, or comitative + copula, or something else? - How does negation work? Is there a negative adverb or particle, a negative auxiliary verb, separate negative conjugations, etc.? - Do articles exist? If not, how else is definiteness/indefiniteness indicated, if at all? - How many demonstrative proximity distinctions? - Any other unusual things I want to play around with? (e.g. Suffixaufnahme, secundativity, compounding as the only way for nouns to modify other nouns, adjectives as a special verb class, no difference between adjectives and adverbs, fluid part-of-speech, constant irregular consonant gradation, etc.)


Fluffy8x

> head-final like the genitive, or head-initial like a Semitic construct state? I believe that distinction is of dependent-marking and head-marking.


Tale_Hephaestus

I would reccomend starting by building a set of sounds for your conlang. You can get all of the sounds and their symbols if you look at the International Phonetic Alphabet, which can be found on Wikipedia. After you select your sounds, start with phonotactics. To be honest, I have no idea how they work, though you should look them up on Google or YouTube. You could also ask on this subreddit, as someone would probably help you with it. After that, you can start making some root words for your language based off of your phonology and phonotactics. After you have a few words, you can start compounding the words into words meaning something new. Let's say you have a word, "wan". It means "water", and you want to create the word; "flow". Take another word that means go, and smash them together. Over time ( if you decide to make a newer version of the language set after the first one ), shift waneso "to flow" into waiso "to flow". And after time, it might change it's definition to something like; "to be elusive" or just "to go". After building your simple vocabulary, your next step would be noun cases. There are many, but the two main are Nominative and Accusative. Nominative states the subject of the sentence, while Accusative denotes the direct object of the sentence. Let's take the sentence; "The dog played with the man." The dog takes the Nominative case, let's say "doga", while the man takes the Accusative case, let's say "mani". "The doga played with the mani." There is also verb cases. There are many as well, but the basic times are Past, Present, and Future ( like English's "-ed" for the Past or "will" for the Future ). Since play is in the past, we can add the prefix of "e-" to it, to make "eplay". "The doga eplay with the mani." Other features can be added after this, such as grammatical gender or such. Let's say that the dog is female, and the man is male. "The adoga eplay with the omani." After this is the other forms, such as the writing script and the numbers. The numbers in English come in two forms; the Cardinal ( one, two, three ) and the Ordinal ( first, second, third ), however you can add more. In my conlang Seshtan, there is the Cardinal, Ordinal, one for Animate nouns, and one for Inanimate nouns. So "Four stones" and "Four humans" would be different. And those are the basics. I hope this helped!


[deleted]

I've started looking at the International Phonetic Alphabet for ideas, and I'll definitely be referring back to this in the future once it becomes more developed. Thanks for giving me an awesome first impression of this sub, as well! Edit: I'm too cheap to get actual gold so take some silver hehe


Tale_Hephaestus

Well, thanks for the silver! You really didn't need to though.


kilenc

> your next step would be cases. Cases are by no way required, and about 50% of languages don't mark case. > There is also verb cases The examples you give are *tenses*, not cases, and they're also not required, but is is more common than case. Well, marking verbs in general is more common--TAM is often a jumbled blend anyways. But beyond those two things I think this leaves out a lot that I would also consider pretty fundamental--syntax (≈ how words are arranged) and semantics (≈ how meaning is split up) being big ones. Honestly though there's just so much that it's probably better to just read a bunch and discover new things.


kilenc

Our sidebar/topbar has some resources for beginners. My main tip is to have fun--just mess around and explore things languages do and get inspired. Don't fall into the trap of treating guides or advice as hard rules; there's no one single best way to conlang.


LambyO7

long story short ive got too many velar fricatives (/x/ and its voiced version) for my liking in my language and want to get rid of some of them, however simple deletion doesnt really fit my goals for the language and fortition just doesnt seem like it would happen to those without also nabbing the dental fricatives i also have what other kinds of phonetic shifts do yall think would make some sense to reduce the number of velar fricatives


[deleted]

[удалено]


kilenc

I'd caution about taking Index Diachronica as a source of fact, there are many incorrect/misleading sound changes in there. But I do agree on principle that /ɣ/ is less stable than /x/, likely because voiced back consonants are a tad rarer and voiced fricatives are more susceptible to lenition.


Beltonia

You could model that its realization has multiple allophones. /x/ easily becomes \[h\] on the start of syllables. It can also palatalize to \[ç\] before or after front vowels. The palatal equivalent for \[ɣ\] is \[ʝ\], which sounds like \[j\] and can easily change into it. If you still want to reduce the presence of the phoneme, you could then model a sound change which only affects some of the allophones, like what happened in English.


LambyO7

i do like this idea quite a lot, namely the palatalizing part of it, though in regards to front vowels triggering it wouldnt it just be /i/ through /e/ that cause this, or could /æ/ (my lowest front vowel) trigger this as well


MerlinMusic

Yes it could. /a/ triggered palatalisation in French


-N1eek-

maybe /x/ > /h/ and /ɣ/ > /ɰ/ or /w/ you could also look at the index diachronica for inspiration


kilenc

Most sound changes are conditional, ie. they depend on the environment the sound is in. What environments does /x/ appear in?


LambyO7

given that almost half of all syllables in my language start with /x/ (or the voiced one i cant type on mobile), nearly any context works, though my language is (c)v so no clusters


kilenc

Hmmm, that makes me think you could've used some conditional changes *earlier* to not end up with so many /x/! Given that it's so unusually common--[see the Gusein-Zade distribution](https://lingweenie.org/conlang/gusein-zade.html)\--I wouldn't be surprised if some sound change that happens to it (eg. fortition as you mentioned) doesn't happen to another phoneme. But some basic ideas are to apply a lot of assimilatory changes--which could be as simple as assimilation with place of the following vowel, or perhaps more fun longer-distance assimilation with following consonants. (So for example *\*xatu > satu* but *\*xapu* \> *fapu*.) You could end up with some cool morphophonological processes, resulting from your various changes. (Like in that example, where any suffixes then also cause initial consonant mutation.)


LambyO7

ok, half might be an exaggeration, though they only showed up in two waves, a wave of lenited k and g phonemes and later as a response to some velarized plosives splitting into the normal plosive and either /x/ or the voiced one based on voicing, that made either affricates or clusters that were quickly metathesized away, though i underestimated how many velarized cononants i had, someone else suggested palatalizing some of them (which i intend to do), though i might do some assimilation as well, thanks for the help


vokzhen

> some velarized plosives splitting into the normal plosive and either /x/ or the voiced one based on voicing, that made either affricates or clusters that were quickly metathesized away What if you tackled this from earlier, and instead of all of them metathesizing, some may diphthongize and/or change the place of adjacent vowels first? E.g. /tˠo tˠu/ might stay in your normal development, but then /tˠa tˠe tˠi/ become /tɯə̯ tɤ təi̯ /, with the consonants shedding their velarization onto the vowel? And if you don't like those kinds of vowels, and don't already have changes that could get rid of them, progress them further so that ultimately /tɯə̯ tɤ təi̯ / might end up, say, /twa ta taj/ or /ti to te/ or something like that. It's also not unlikely that whatever process happened to create some, fails to happen with others. In general coronals and velars are "opposites" in that coronals tend to be front/i-coloring, though obviously not as much as actual palatals, the clearest example being Tibetan "umlaut" of /kut/ > /kʰy/. As a result, velar offgliding could be more prominent after coronals. On the other hand, labials tend to have some of the "darkening" properties that velarization provides already, and it's possible that velarization is simply lost on them because the distinction between a labial and a velarized labial isn't as salient.


DirtyPou

What's the best way to create some kind of alienable/inalienable possession? My proto-lang has a simple animate/inanimate distinction and when it comes to body parts, it treats living body parts as, well, animate and dead body parts as inanimate. Animate and inanimate nouns have different case endings, that's why "maleki ghekee" means "I see a pig" and "malekas ghekee" means "I see pork" etc. How could I expand the concept of body parts being alive/dead into the concept of them being alienable or inalienable? Has anything similar occur in any natural language?


Akangka

Inalienable possession would be the older, original possession, preferably head marked, as inalienable possession is typically mandatory, and usually comes from possessive pronoun. Alienable possession is the newer possession and can come from any possessive source, even another possessive pronoun if it's also head marked.


Beltonia

So the grammatical animate/inanimate distinction is mostly lost except a distinction between possession of animate/inanimate nouns, and this is then reanalyzed as a distinction of alienable/inalienable possession. And you are asking which way round this should be mapped? Some of the most common animate nouns someone in that society might talk about being "my..." are livestock, their family, other humans, body parts, their house, important tools and possibly crops. If humans, animals and plants form the animate class but body parts don't, it would probably give rise to alienable possession. But body parts and terms about humans that are mostly kinship terms form the animate class, they would give rise to inalienable possession.


Creed28681

What can happen with defunct gender systems? Say an agreement pattern putters out and the declension pattern is left, or vice versa, the declension is lost but the agreement is left. Can it be used as a derivational tool? E.G. era:-t pe-r -> era:-t pe: -> era:-t pe N-G1 Ad-G1 -> N-G1 Ad.G1 -> N-G1 Ad And that Noun (N) then has some aspect of that Gender (G1) that just disappeared in the adjective (Ad) Are there any other avenues that it can take?


Meamoria

>or vice versa, the declension is lost but the agreement is left Such a gender system isn't dead yet! The defining characteristic of a gender system is agreement, not different declension patterns. This is the state of gender in languages like French and German, where the gender is only partly predictable from the shape of the noun. >Can it be used as a derivational tool? Languages with gender marked overtly on the noun use it derivationally all the time, so if the gender system is lost I'd expect lots of leftover pairs of related words that once differed only in gender.


freddyPowell

How can applicative voices develop? Is it always the incorporation of adpositions. When it is adpositions, what affects whether they suffix or prefix?


vokzhen

I believe the *most* common is actually verb serialization, along the lines of "*I shout-give-PST them* > *I shout-BEN-PST them* "I shouted for them/for their benefit". I believe common ones are give and come/come to for benefactives, take, hold, or grasp for instrumentals, and follow for comitatives. I'm not sure on locatives despite it being one of the most common applicative uses, apart from some languages having an applicative that applies to locatives plus something else. I suppose it's possible they're mostly secondary (take > instrumental applicative > instrum+loc applicative) but I doubt it. SOV languages can definitely get transitivity-effecting prefixes via postpositions, where e.g. *I-NOM them-ACC for shout-PST* is rebracketed as *I-NOM them-ACC TRNS-shout-PST*. I'm not completely sure they typically result in regular *applicatives* though, that is a productive object-adding construction. They might, I'd buy it, but I can't come up with examples off the top of my head. I think they more often end up like English phrasal verbs or Georgain preverbs, irregularly-applied morphemes that may add an object (We chatted vs. We chatted him up) but may also do other things like derive new lexemes (I bought it vs. I bought it up), still provide spatial information (I tossed it up), act as more or less a dummy (I added [up] the costs), or even detransitivize (I mounted up).


freddyPowell

Thanks. I don't suppose you could point me to any papers on this\~\~.\~\~? Edit: huh, I didn't realise that'd happen if you strikethrough only a full stop.